7. Ah, who wrote the book?

8. Here you go

Future Shock is a book written by the futurist Alvin Toffler in 1970. In the book, Toffler defines the term "future shock" as a certain psychological state of individuals and entire societies. His shortest definition for the term is a personal perception of "too much change in too short a period of time".

Toffler argued that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a "super-industrial society". This change overwhelms people, he believed, the accelerated rate of technological and social change leaving people disconnected and suffering from "shattering stress and disorientation"—future shocked. Toffler stated that the majority of social problems are symptoms of future shock. In his discussion of the components of such shock he popularized the term "information overload."

3. I think I know....

Several months back I wrote about the insights I found in reading the book, "The Republican Brain"...followed by reading a somewhat less partisan book called, "The Political Mind".

After seeing what happened on election night, e.g. the total surprise of the Republicans of the Democratic win, the so-called "Rove Meltdown", continuing reports that the Romney staff never saw the defeat coming, that they didn't believe any of the polls, that Mitt himself was "shellshocked" by the defeat (he had not even written a concession speech because he didn't believe it could happen)..well..after all that, I was subtly reminded by the spouse that the books were right....when confronted with facts, or empirical evidence that is contrary to their core beliefs, Conservatives, statistically more commonly than liberals, deny the evidence, invent their own facts, dissemble or attack the source of the evidence in order not to be forced to abandon their own position.

Liberals (being wishy-washy lol) are statistically more likely to re-evaluate their beliefs and change them when confronted with facts. I think all of this is still true....we do think differently and the question of it being environmental or "hard-wired" hereditary is still not clear.

Election night played this theory out on a national stage and plainly enough for all to see. It needs more study if we are going to have good, rational national debates with two parties dealing with real facts on real problems.

4. It doesn't appear so

The republicans I know have been in complete denial and even now can't come out of it. They truly believe things like that Obama is a Muslim and is from Kenya and will destroy America. That Obama doesn't love America. That he couldn't possibly have really won and therefore there must be something off with the election. That Nate Silver just randomly guesses. They only believed Gallup and Rasmussen because they truly thought they were the only unbiased polls. They still believe that. All the news shows are not telling the truth - they're just shilling for Romney. All this Libya and Obama:2016 conspiracy garbage. It's pretty astonishing. I don't know how it's possible to so thoroughly delude yourself.

5. Modern Reapublicanism is married to their ideological worldview.

They really can't deal with a reality that conflicts with their predetermined mindset. So they simply discard those inconvenient truths. Which might be good if you're emotionally unable to engage in the real world...not so good if you are trying to run a country as complex as the USA in a world that's changing at a increasingly faster pace. They really are political dinosaurs.